Chapter 805: Living Off the Land

As soon as Ye Qingfeng heard that Wang An wanted to buy grain without food stamps—and in large quantities at that—his face immediately clouded over with worry.

It was obvious that Ye Qingfeng very much wanted to help Wang An, but without the food stamps to account for the transaction, he found himself in a very difficult position.

After thinking for a long while, Ye Qingfeng asked tentatively

"Big Brother, I'll get you a thousand jin of grain first. Just make do with that for a couple of days. I'll try to think of a way over the next two days, and I'll have my dad help look into it too. Does that work for you?"

It had to be admitted that Ye Qingfeng was quite capable; in a time of such severe food shortages, being able to scrape together a thousand jin of grain made him a pretty impressive figure.

Seeing the look of distress on Ye Qingfeng's face, Wang An originally intended to agree, because a thousand jin of grain was indeed a significant amount.

However, while a thousand jin was plenty for a normal person, for the ninety-odd laborers at Wang An's house, it would last three days at most.

And that was only because of the current situation; Wang An's household no longer fed these laborers nearly as many steamed buns as they used to.

This wasn't simply because Wang An had become stingy or wanted to save grain, but because when every meal included meat, almost everyone's appetite for staples decreased.

It was a law of nature!

One had to admit that having grease in the stomach versus having none were two entirely different concepts.

Just like when Wang An had first been reborn—back then, he could easily eat fifteen or sixteen of those oversized meat buns in one meal. But if you asked him to eat fifteen or sixteen large meat buns now, it would be like a joke.

Although he could force them down if he tried, who in their right mind would want to experience that feeling of being stuffed to death?

Therefore, there was absolutely nothing wrong with Wang An reducing the supply of steamed buns.

Of course, the number of buns remained the same; it was just that the size of the buns had shrunk—and shrunk severely.

Yet even so, the number of laborers never decreased, and not a single one of them ever complained.

This was because almost everyone who came to help knew that Wang An didn't actually need this many people to build his house; it was just that Wang An's family felt too embarrassed to tell them to leave.

Furthermore, while they were too shy to kick people out, they never slacked on the food. This was mainly reflected in the fact that while the buns were fewer, the amount of sliced meat had increased significantly.

With one loss balanced by a gain, who would have the nerve to be thick-skinned enough to grumble?

Wang An thought for a moment and said

"A thousand jin of grain? A thousand jin isn't enough to do much. It'll be gone in three days at most. What do we do after those three days? We can't exactly start gnawing on our own thighs, can we?"

Hearing this, Ye Qingfeng swallowed hard and said

"You don't understand, Big Brother. There's a food shortage everywhere right now. A lot of the grain from our area has been transported away to support other places. Grain is very tight here too; we have to do inventory every single day."

Then, Ye Qingfeng added somewhat sheepishly

"Big Brother, don't worry. I'll definitely find a way in the next two days. Even if I can't, my dad definitely will. If all else fails, I'll go and trade with some of the 'children of cadres.' One way or another, I'll scrape the grain together for you."

The moment Wang An heard the word "trade," he immediately remembered that he still had nearly two thousand jin of fine grain stamps. Thus, Wang An said

"Qingfeng, I have quite a few fine grain stamps. Can your grain station trade fine grain stamps for coarse grain stamps? I reckon those staff and cadres must love eating fine grain, and they probably have plenty of coarse grain stamps they'd want to trade away."

Wang An's idea wasn't baseless. In this world, no matter the era or how scarce resources became, one could always believe that wealthy people existed.

Similarly, even in a place dripping with wealth, there were bound to be poor people.

Take Hong Kong, for example; billionaires were everywhere, and every billionaire had a private villa or estate.

But in the slums, they couldn't even guarantee basic drinking water or electricity.

Not to mention the living conditions—several family members squeezed into a room only a few square meters in size. To put it bluntly, it was a struggle just to turn around.

In short, no matter the time, the gap between rich and poor always existed.

That was a fact.

Moreover, Wang An already knew that the current ticket scalpers would trade fine grain stamps for coarse ones, and vice versa. However, he also knew that these fellows had hearts as black as coal.

If you used fine grain stamps to trade for coarse ones, one jin of fine grain stamps would get you three and a half jin of coarse ones.

But if you used coarse grain stamps to trade for fine ones, it suddenly became four and a half jin of coarse stamps for one jin of fine stamps.

In other words, no matter how you traded, for a normal person, it was a massive, bleeding loss!!

Yet despite this, the ticket scalpers' business was doing quite well. Strange, wasn't it?

Hearing Wang An say this, Ye Qingfeng's eyes lit up. He looked at Wang An with a mix of anticipation and excitement

"Of course we can trade! Although it's not allowed on the surface, everyone does it privately. Otherwise, relying on these meager salaries, we'd have starved to death long ago. Uh, Big Brother, how many fine grain stamps do you have?"

Perhaps feeling that his attitude was a bit too eager, Ye Qingfeng immediately explained

"To be honest with you, Big Brother, all of us are short on fine grain stamps. The thousand jin of grain I said I'd get you earlier... I got those through trading. Hehehehe..."

Despite being an explanation, whether it was a twist of human nature or a lapse in morality, the moment he mentioned that the thousand jin of grain was obtained through trading, Ye Qingfeng actually wore a very proud expression!

It was as if, as a grain station employee, trading so many stamps was something genuinely impressive and worthy of pride.

Fortunately, Wang An didn't care about such things, and he actually looked down on Ye Qingfeng a bit.

However, this "looking down" was not the usual kind. If Wang An were in Ye Qingfeng's position, he would have had at least ten thousand jin of grain stamps in his hand by now.

Yet Ye Qingfeng was smug over a mere thousand jin; one didn't even know what to say to him.

To put it in the local dialect, he was a "useless piece of work."

Then again, as the saying goes, "if you live by the mountain, eat from the mountain; if you live by the water, eat from the water." Living by the grain station and eating the dividends of grain stamps didn't seem to be much of a problem.

After all, in theory, trading stamps was neither a violation of regulations nor illegal; it was simply making a bit of extra money on the side while making things convenient for others.

(End of Chapter)